Slightly left field interview here with Carl Cashman, Leader of the Lib Dems on Liverpool City Council.
Is he correct?
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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10 Comments
What is left field about this?
@Joseph Gaunt
I think his 80% claim is pretty much nonsense so that is probably what is ‘left field’ in this interview.
The IG post screenshotted misquotes him. Watch the video and you’ll see what he actually says is “80% of Liberal Democrat members – I’m not lying – 80% of Liberal Democrat members are probably part of the LGBTQ community“. And it doesn’t look like he’s joking.
My reaction is, he needs to get out more. 80% is absurd.
It also worries me that he seems to think 80% would be something to be proud of. It isn’t. According to ONS 3.8% of the UK population identify as LGB and 0.5% as Q. Even allowing for some underreporting, clearly only a small minority of the UK population are LGBT+, so if it was 80% of members that would just say we’re totally unrepresentative of the UK population: Not be something to be proud of. Luckily it almost certainly isn’t true.
Taking jokes out of context is easy pickings. I am a CIS white male with a large (35+) blended family of whom 2 are trans. I am very LGBTQ+ supportive. I suspect that’s what Carl meant to say because LibDems are, generally, so inclined. I suspect 80% is on the low side for LGBTQ+ supporting LibDems at conference, because attempts by TERFS to push their agenda have been resoundingly defeated.
The diversity and inclusion group collects this demographic data for equalities monitoring. I doubt it is anywhere near 80% speaking from my experience in a former Tory stronghold (and not a university constituency where it may I accept be higher but still unlikely to be that high).
Carl says 80% of Lib Dem members who attend Conference are LGBT+. That isn’t far off the mark, as anyone who has been in the conference bar ls at 3am can attest.
@Ynys Môn Man
I don’t think those you will meet at 3am at the conference bar would be a very representative sample of conference attendees, let alone party members more generally.
On a more general point, it concerns me that we appear to be far more interested in promoting the celebration of some protected characteristics than we are of others. For example, those who have disabilities suffer huge discrimination, are far more likely to suffer poverty, and are under-represented in the political process. Yet we seem far less interested in championing those with this protected characteristics than we than we are of those with other protected characteristics. There is no hierarchy of protected characteristics so let’s not give the impression that there is.
@ Joan Summers “I don’t think those you will meet at 3am at the conference bar would be a very representative sample of conference attendees, let alone party members more generally”.
I suspect they probably think they are, Joan.
@David, Joan – to remind you, this was the full quote:
“Carl has joked that at Liberal Democrats conference it can feel like 80% of the room is LGBTQ+”
I mentioned the conference bar at 3am.
There is probably no better litmus of how liberal a liberal party is than having large support in the LGBT community. Esp with the constant discrimination against trans people that has been shut down by the LDs. It’s a welcoming community and at scale, that should mean that it’s very popular with people who are treated poorly by other parties on the basis of their identity. We should over index with people of color, women, disabled, etc too because the other parties just are not welcoming of anyone who doesn’t fit a narrow mold.